Synergy used to be great, the original developers really knew what they were doing, but since then it's been taken over by a commercial developer that seems to have no interest in making a good product and far more interest in charging money for it and licensing - more bugs are introduced with every release, clipboard support is half-broken on Linux for years, the Synergy 2.0 release now causes my mouse to continuously leave my screen while gaming even when locked and random restarts of the service and jumping back to the middle of the screen are far too common. I have to revert back to a very specific version to make Synergy work acceptably and I'm reliant on it for my daily workflow.
Worst part is I actually paid them money for it hoping they'd have fixed it by now...
Nick forked a dead project and wanted to keep developing it, but still needed to pay rent and eat (a common problem among programmers). In order to try to both continue paying for necessary life functions and work on Synergy, he began asking for money. This isn't evil. The project was abandoned when he came along. I'm not saying Nick Bolton has done everything right, he clearly had little to no business experience before taking this on and was far too optimistic, but he did something no one else was doing: work on Synergy.
That's been my experience also. It's kind of surprising given that I was able to replicate 90% of the functionality (that I normally use) for a Raspberry Pi project using only netevent[1] and netcat. Obviously cross-platform and international support (+ handling edge cases) would complicate things, but even in the most basic scenarios, Synergy has been terribly unreliable for me lately.
I had been using Synergy to control my work laptop from my home machine. I hadn't used it in a while (2+ years) and my computer would constantly run out of memory (I think it was in dwm.exe, if I remember correctly) and I would need to reboot. It wasn't until I read the Random ASCII article linked from here (https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2018/02/11/zombie-processe...) about zombie processes that I was able to track it down to Synergy and uninstall it.
I'm the CEO of Symless, the company behind Synergy. I wanted to chime in and let everyone know that you can ask me anything (reply to this comment).
I've been working on Synergy as the lead developer since 2006 (before I started the company). Synergy 2 is an early beta and is still under development (the final version will be quite different to what's you see now). All users have access to Synergy 1 (https://symless.com/synergy/downloads) which is the recommended version and is still being developed. If you need a refund, that's absolutely fine, please get in touch: https://symless.com/contact
Please let me know if there's anything I can do to help you.
I know ChromeOS considers all programs to be hostile but how long does it take to get either a) Synergy ported to this new operating system or b) some explanation as to why there are no plans to create a ChromeOS version?
Even a phone version would be nice. It would enable people to type their texts rather than 'peck' at the keyboard.
The thing is that people find other workarounds and other products come along to make Synergy redundant. As an example there are the Logitech keyboards that will connect to three devices, e.g. one's phone, computer and laptop.
Over the years I have had genuine 'wow' from people who are truly amazed, as if it is magic when I move from computer to computer with the same keyboard/mouse. They wonder how it works and how it is connected. Few products are so impressive however the impression left on them is that you have to be a linux coder with terminal screens everywhere to use it. So there is no 'where do you get that' follow up question and therefore no mass adoption. It could be done.
I bought Synergy when I need to work with a windows and mac (Mac being my primary driver) and it made my mac unusable. I used to love Synergy but this made it useless for me and I had to get a refund.
I payed for Synergy because I love the concept, but the UI is pretty much unusable on high DPI screens on Windows and looks like Windows 95. Are there any plans to update it?
I wrote my own replacement for synergy years ago. It's called touchstream[0] -- it's unlikely to be as full features as, but it's TONS lighter, and I've been using between my mac workstation and my linux workstation for a good many years without a single issue.
Mileage may very, etc etc -- I implemented the features I needed!
This looks awesome and may get me to stop using Synergy altogether! One of my daily use machines at work is a very old laptop I'm basically using as a second screen via Lubuntu, and Synergy is the most resource-heavy program on it by far. It's also really glitchy, causing me to have to stop working and fix it several times a day.
Adding my support to this. Barrier took a little fiddling to get it working on my 10.9 Mac, but it fixed crashes I'd had with Synergy for years, and seems to have some active devs.
I tried synergy, with the hope that I could control a Linux media PC from both Linux and Windows machines. Unfortunately it was too flaky, e.g. control keys never being released (I think it's https://github.com/symless/synergy-core/issues/9 ).
These days I use x2x over SSH. I don't use it on Windows, but then again I don't use Windows ;)
I have two system services which poll the surrounding WiFi networks: when I'm at home, I can control the media PC by moving off the left of my screen; when I'm at work, I can control a more powerful desktop by moving off the right (the latter goes through some multi-hop reverse SSH tunnels).
Synergy is great. I use it for sharing my mouse and keyboard between my Windows desktop and MacBook Pro. I had some latency issues on WiFi with Synergy 1.x, but that seems to be resolved with 2.x. Licenses are very cheap for their commercial offering and I would highly recommend supporting them!
I've not had good luck with the 2.x releases. Random mouse moves, disconnects, jumping to the center of the screen, mouse not wanting to move between screens and odd clipboard issues. Life is too short, I went back to a KVM.
Mostly the same boat here. I've been using Synergy for a very long time to share between Win desktop and a Macbook. I haven't switched over to 2.x yet so I just have an ethernet adapter on my macbook to deal with the wifi latency issue. But for the license price I paid I've gotten very good use out of this particular software.
I was using an old version of Synergy, until one day it stopped working. Since I only needed it for Windows clients, I found Mouse without Borders: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=354... . It has the benefit that all input devices can access all devices (Synergy has a "master-slave" structure).
This guy Nick Bolton took the project to squeeze it. He never really contributed to quality but turned it into closed source. He claimed, that he need to charge for it to finance dev. However, he only invested into the payment wall backend development instead of finally making a stable product.
Nick promised, Synergy would be a lifetime license for all future versions for $1. Sniff sniff. Yes, you smell the right thing.
He promptly broke that promise with v2 and charged again. $29!
But half of the promised features actually exist and more than half of that actually work. Synergy became a scam.
"Open letter" sounds so cool but it is a letter of promises again. Dont fall for it. IMHO, Nick has all narcissist symptoms: Pictures of himself everywhere on his website and promises of everything to everyone. Typical symptoms.
Dont take my words. Look it up in Google and archive.org. His current roadmap is his roadmap from 2014.
I left Synergy after they refused to fix longstanding bugs (I was a paying customer.) I paid for ShareMouse and have been happy ever since. Nick Bolton has thin skin (he locked github issues, deleting hundreds of comments on one particular bug because he wanted to bury it.)
I'm really happy that they open sourced their core code! That's an awesome thing for a company that's making money from this code to do. I know they've had some issues going from 1.x to 2.x (see other comments) but this is a really brave step for them to take and I want to applaud them for moving to an open source model for a portion of their paid product. I hope this helps them turn around their 2.x version.
If you are using Windows-only machines at your desktop, you might take a look at Input Director [0]. It is the best solution for this. Working clipboard and file sharing, which works because it uses Windows shares.
The best feature in my eyes is that you can rightclick any file and click "open on slave X" and the file will open there.
I'm a little amazed at all the reports of problems in the comments here on HN. I have been using Synergy for probably 15 years now, and have had very little issue with it. I use it to connect Linux, OSX and Windows. I use what appears to be version 2.0 on Gentoo as the main driver/server (the machine where the keyboard and mouse are connected).
I've been a user and follower of Synergy for years, and I've been following it from the perspective of the mailing list :). Honestly Nick should just give up, open source everything, and find a new job.
I co-developed Synergy v2.0, but have since moved on. With that in mind, if anyone has any appropriate technical questions or concerns I'm sure Nick wouldn't mind me answering them.
Synergy 2 has so many issues that force me to restart it several times a day. I also need to keep the window open because my Ubuntu machine keeps stealing input priority. It breaks copy paste randomly. But I absolutely need it for quick cross platform testing and there seems to be no other solution besides a KVM switch. I hope this turns the business around.
Same here. Paid for 2.0 and it was unusable between by Win 10 and Ubuntu boxes. After fighting with it for several hours I just uninstalled and wrote it off as a loss.
If you only need to share a keyboard and mouse between Windows machines, then checkout Input Director, which works great! And is free for non-commercial use. I have no relationship with them, just a very satisfied personal user over many years.
Used Synergy awhile back for development and testing and it worked really well. Glad to see it pop-up again brings back memories. Glad I don't "have" to use it at the moment though.
[+] [-] shittyadmin|7 years ago|reply
Worst part is I actually paid them money for it hoping they'd have fixed it by now...
[+] [-] burnte|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MrUnderhill|7 years ago|reply
(Edited, thanks corpMaverick and stagger87)
[+] [-] dperfect|7 years ago|reply
[1] https://github.com/Blub/netevent
[+] [-] hateful|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ionforce|7 years ago|reply
This is a great, charitable interpretation of someone's work.
[+] [-] nbolton4|7 years ago|reply
I'm the CEO of Symless, the company behind Synergy. I wanted to chime in and let everyone know that you can ask me anything (reply to this comment).
I've been working on Synergy as the lead developer since 2006 (before I started the company). Synergy 2 is an early beta and is still under development (the final version will be quite different to what's you see now). All users have access to Synergy 1 (https://symless.com/synergy/downloads) which is the recommended version and is still being developed. If you need a refund, that's absolutely fine, please get in touch: https://symless.com/contact
Please let me know if there's anything I can do to help you.
Thanks, Nick
[+] [-] Theodores|7 years ago|reply
I know ChromeOS considers all programs to be hostile but how long does it take to get either a) Synergy ported to this new operating system or b) some explanation as to why there are no plans to create a ChromeOS version?
Even a phone version would be nice. It would enable people to type their texts rather than 'peck' at the keyboard.
The thing is that people find other workarounds and other products come along to make Synergy redundant. As an example there are the Logitech keyboards that will connect to three devices, e.g. one's phone, computer and laptop.
Over the years I have had genuine 'wow' from people who are truly amazed, as if it is magic when I move from computer to computer with the same keyboard/mouse. They wonder how it works and how it is connected. Few products are so impressive however the impression left on them is that you have to be a linux coder with terminal screens everywhere to use it. So there is no 'where do you get that' follow up question and therefore no mass adoption. It could be done.
[+] [-] lxe|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joshstrange|7 years ago|reply
I bought Synergy when I need to work with a windows and mac (Mac being my primary driver) and it made my mac unusable. I used to love Synergy but this made it useless for me and I had to get a refund.
[+] [-] felixfbecker|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gsich|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] buserror|7 years ago|reply
Mileage may very, etc etc -- I implemented the features I needed!
[0]: https://github.com/buserror/touchstream
[+] [-] morganvachon|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] slartibardfast0|7 years ago|reply
https://github.com/debauchee/barrier
SSL & other important features
[+] [-] WibbletheDuck|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] johnt15|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chriswarbo|7 years ago|reply
These days I use x2x over SSH. I don't use it on Windows, but then again I don't use Windows ;)
I have two system services which poll the surrounding WiFi networks: when I'm at home, I can control the media PC by moving off the left of my screen; when I'm at work, I can control a more powerful desktop by moving off the right (the latter goes through some multi-hop reverse SSH tunnels).
[+] [-] yjftsjthsd-h|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rektide|7 years ago|reply
long time user, it's always been great. runs most of my home. absolutely invaluable.
i'd love to see standards, a mouse & keyboard & clipboard standard protocol emerge some day.
[+] [-] yjftsjthsd-h|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ktross|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] russh|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zf00002|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] netsharc|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sweetbacon|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] YunHi|7 years ago|reply
This guy Nick Bolton took the project to squeeze it. He never really contributed to quality but turned it into closed source. He claimed, that he need to charge for it to finance dev. However, he only invested into the payment wall backend development instead of finally making a stable product.
Nick promised, Synergy would be a lifetime license for all future versions for $1. Sniff sniff. Yes, you smell the right thing.
He promptly broke that promise with v2 and charged again. $29!
But half of the promised features actually exist and more than half of that actually work. Synergy became a scam.
"Open letter" sounds so cool but it is a letter of promises again. Dont fall for it. IMHO, Nick has all narcissist symptoms: Pictures of himself everywhere on his website and promises of everything to everyone. Typical symptoms.
Dont take my words. Look it up in Google and archive.org. His current roadmap is his roadmap from 2014.
[+] [-] GiorgioG|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] math0ne|7 years ago|reply
https://www.startech.com/ca/Server-Management/KVM-Switches/2...
The software is not as configurable but it is SO much more reliable and responsive. Basically a wired version of synergy.
[+] [-] CUViper|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bargl|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shittyadmin|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gsich|7 years ago|reply
The best feature in my eyes is that you can rightclick any file and click "open on slave X" and the file will open there.
[0] https://inputdirector.com/
[+] [-] Pistos2|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hugg|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nly|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bitcraft|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] corpMaverick|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chrislynch42|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] frontier|7 years ago|reply
http://www.inputdirector.com/
[+] [-] treesloth|7 years ago|reply